Friendly Fires At Bestival's RizLab - The Dance/Electro Acts You Need To Hear

Posted on 12 Sep 11

Friendly Fires got the chance to curate their own stage in the RizLab arena at Bestival last weekend. We caught up with the boys to find out who their new favourite dance and electro acts are, who gets Ed throwing his trademark moves, and who they'd like to work with.

How did you pick the newer acts on the Bestival bill at RizLab?
Ed: "I definitely wanted Lone to be on the line-up, I’d planned on writing a track with him and was going to sing on one of his songs. In many ways, this whole Rizla event forced us together to work on things sooner rather than later.

"SBTRKT is supporting us on our next tour and it just felt totally right. A dance act with a pop sensibility - which is what we're about. As soon as we get back from Bestival, we're going into the studio with SBTRKT to work on a song we've started. It's hopefully going to be a limited seven-inch that's available only on our tour. It's great to be able to rehearse with SBTRKT, it's really interesting to see different people's work ethics and how they are in the studio."

Edd: "We’d already bagged TEED (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs) to do a remix for us before we were even presented with the RizLab project. It seemed easy when it came to who to choose for the current acts."

Who else do you like?
Ed: "An artist called The Field, he’s not necessarily new but he’s just brought out a record and we’ve sampled him before in 'Paris'. His new record is just outstanding, it reminds me of why I was so drawn to his music in the first place. I’ve been playing it non stop and I really want him to take off in the UK.

"I’ve been listening to a lot of music off of Tri Angle Records, the sub label of Compound records, which releases The Field's music as well. Artists like Balam Akab and Clams Casino - it’s that very slow motion, very MC driven, really melodic, lush hip hop."

How about you Jack?
Jack: "I like a guy called Hackman. He’s got a megabomb called ‘Close’, it's a big, big tune. It’s quite garagey, but with a sort of oriental theme. He’s got nice vocals as well."